My Lunch with Imus

This really happened. I know it's strange and is less enlightening about this week's Biggest Media Story Ever than I might puff it up to be. But you can't beat the dramatis personae. And it's also the only time in my adult life that I ever held out my hand for a handshake, only to grasp empty, contemptuous air.

The unextended hand belonged to Don Imus, who stared icily at my soft, pink fingers. "That's close enough," he said.

It was August, 1988. I was a fledgling free-lance writer mixing a little business into a trip to New York City. I'd met Kinky Friedman -- the country musician, former leader of the Texas Jewboys, then starting a second career as the author of comically autobiographical mystery notvels -- in an interview a year earlier. Friedman (call him the Kinkster) is an amazingly friendly, garrulous sort, and so to meet him, even professionally, is to win a new friend. An energetic, party-hearty friend who insists that you MUST contact him whenever you're within a thousand miles or so, at which point you will eat, drink and make wacky right until the wheels come off. He was living in NYC then, so when I called the arrangement was made within minutes: The Lone Star Roadhouse in mid-town. 1 pm. Be there. Bring your girlfriend. An interview? Sure, fine, whatever. And don't make plans for later.

So we got there, and then Kinky showed up, trailing some other friend or assistant or something. We had a beer or two, ordered some barbecue, carried on about this or that. My tape recorder was running. Then Kinky looked up and beamed. "The I-Man! Hey, have you guys met Imus?"

We said hello. He nodded curtly, took a seat across the table, next to the Kinkster. I was glowing with Lone Star beer, listening to their jokey hellos, guffawing along. Imus appraised me with his icy blue eyes.

"What are you, exactly?"

"Peter's a writer!" Kinky declared.

"Well, that's special."

I probably should have been withering just then. But here's the thing: I didn't really know who Imus was. I'd grown up in the Northwest, spent most of my life there. And if Imus was even on in the air in Seattle or Portland I'd never heard his voice. The only reason I knew his name, in fact, was that he turned up every so often in the two Kinky Friedman mystery novels I'd read. And that was the sum total of what I knew about Don Imus. I think he figured that out.

Plus I was a punk, and a naif, and so far out of my element, so far over my head, that I didn't even know it. Imus did his best to ignore me. He spoke only to Kinky, a little to the other guy, but when it came to me and the girlfriend...our shiny little faces hovering just three feet from his sour, craggy one...we didn't quite exist.

Except to Kinky, of course, who wouldn't stop talking to us. Asking after our lives. Telling stories. Being a complete mensch. Asking, demanding, that we join him and his friends at another club downtown tonight to catch some music and really tie one on. (We were headed up to the Berkshires, sadly).

More fun than all the danged Berkshires put together

So it was hard to feel completely diminished. But then when lunch was over (Kinky paid) we all stood up and headed for the door, then out into the soupy August heat. Imus' limo was idling in the street, and he offered to give Kinky a ride downtown. But first Kinky needed to say goodbye. Cancel your trip, he instructed. Meet us tonight, 9 pm, the real Lone Star. With the big lizard on the roof. I laughed, said I'd try to make it happen. He took my hand, slapped me on the back, said we'd hang out again real soon. I'm sure he's said that to multiple thousands of other writers and random passers-by since then, but it was sweet. So was Kinky's pal, the guy whose name I can't recall. He shook hands, told me to listen to the Kinkster, that there was more fun in him than anywhere in all the danged Berkshires rolled together. These were nice folks, these guys.

Imus, on the other hand, looked impatient. But social niceties are what they are, so I turned to him too, and said it had been nice to meet him. I held out my hand for the traditional grip and go. He looked at my hand, and then back up at me..

"That's close enough."

Then he was back in the air-conditioned peace of his limo, and gliding down the street toward the glories awaiting him in the next two decades.